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None of This Matters
Another week, another dumb internet outrage. This time it was about the Covington kids. Before that, it was the fake news story and that celebrity who said the thing and a mean lady who yelled at a nice man and the bad man who was mean to the dog.
Each time, the usual suspects bellied up to their keyboards and rage-typed at each other until the next “scandal” made them type at different people. If you want to remain sane in the face of today’s Outrage-Industrial Complex, I’ll let you in on a secret: Twitter doesn’t matter. The viral video doesn’t matter. Our opinions don’t matter. This article doesn’t matter. None of this matters.
Conan O’Brien gets it. From a New York Times interview about his retooled talk show:
At this point in my career, I could go out with a grand, 21-gun salute, and climb into a rocket and the entire Supreme Court walks out and they jointly press a button, I’m shot up into the air and there’s an explosion and it’s orange and it spells, “Good night and God love.” In this culture? Two years later, it’s going to be, who’s Conan? This is going to sound grim, but eventually, all our graves go unattended.
Interviewer: You’re right. That does sound grim.
Sorry. Calvin Coolidge was a pretty popular president. I’ve been to his grave in Vermont. It has the presidential seal on it. Nobody was there.
He continues:
I had a great conversation with Albert Brooks once. When I met him for the first time, I was kind of stammering. I said, you make movies, they live on forever. I just do these late-night shows, they get lost, they’re never seen again and who cares?
And he looked at me and he said, “What are you talking about? None of it matters.”
None of it matters?
“No, that’s the secret. In 1940, people said Clark Gable is the face of the 20th Century. Who [expletive] thinks about Clark Gable? It doesn’t matter. You’ll be forgotten. I’ll be forgotten. We’ll all be forgotten.”
It’s so funny because you’d think that would depress me. I was walking on air after that.
That quote went semi-viral when some people worried about the talk-show host. “Is Conan ok?” More ok than a lot of us.
Much of the current hysteria is fueled by people who don’t get this. Some saw the first Covington video Saturday night, didn’t catch a context, and moved on. Many other ill-known scribblers saw it and decided, inexplicably, that their opinion mattered. Hundreds of blue-checks needed — needed — to Issue Their Official Judgment on this non-story for inclusion in the annals of hot-take history. As if the rest of us mooks were slapping our refresh buttons, desperate to know what [insert journo with 13,172 followers] thought about a staredown between some teenager and an old dude.
I can pop off my opinions all day; hell, I’m paid to do it. Albert Brooks can make movies and Conan can entertain millions on late night. But none of it matters in the stretch.
What does matter is holding a damp towel to your sick kid’s forehead and bringing in the groceries for your elderly neighbor and surprising your wife with take-out from that Vietnamese place she loves even though you hate fish sauce. Almost no one will notice it; certainly not the strangers who “follow” you online or the historians of the next age. These little acts still matter more than anything.
But Twitter, the internet … this? None of this matters.
This is part of Ricochet’s Quote of the Day series. Join Ricochet and sign up for a day next month to create your post.
Published in General
Reminds me somewhat of the soldier who comes home after a victorious battle and passes by an old man. The old man says:
“And now, young man, now that you have overcome the enemy without, you can try to win a much greater battle by overcoming a much greater foe: the enemy within.”
Which reminds me of this story:
A scientist who wanted to fix the world sat and worked when suddenly he was approached by his 9-year-old son, determined to help him in his work.
The scientist, who would rather not be interrupted, tried to ask his son to go somewhere else for a while, but when he saw that he would not, he started looking for something that can keep a child busy. He grabbed and tore a page from a magazine with a world map, cut it into small pieces, and gave it to the child with a roll of tape.
“Do you like puzzles?” he asked. “Take this dismantled world map and see if you can fix it.” He was confident the child would take many days to assemble the map, but a few hours later, he heard the voice of his son calling him.
“Dad, I’m done, I put everything back together.” At first, he did not believe it: “It isn’t possible at the age of seven to reconstruct a map of the world he had never seen before!” he thought.
But he put down his notes, and went to his son, when he was sure he was going to see a mess. To his surprise, the map was perfect and all the pieces were in place! “How did you DO that??” the scientist asked his son. “How did you put the world back together?”.
“Well, dad,” the boy answered, “I don’t know the world, but when you tore the page from the magazine, I saw on the other side a picture of a man. When you gave me the world to fix, I tried but couldn’t. Then I flipped all the pieces and started to fix the person. And when I fixed the man, I turned it over and saw the world had been fixed as well…”
Which reminds me of something someone, advanced in years, once said.
When I was young I wanted to change the world.
When I grew a bit older, I decided that changing my country would be good enough.
Then I realized that if I could only change my city it would be a major triumph.
But then I realized that if I could just change my family, all would be well.
Finally, I decided that at the very least I could change myself.
And then, the most amazing thing happened.
As I began to change, I noticed that the world around me began to change, too.
Good deeds, cumulatively, have an enormous impact on the world. And one more good deed may be all it takes to change the world permanently for good.
There is this:
Maimonides, in his writings on the World to Come, describes the state of the world as being in perfect balance. “Each person must view himself and the entire world as being half meritorious and half guilty. If he does a single mitzvah, he can tip the scale and bring redemption and salvation to the entire world.”
To make the concept more tangible, the Lubavitcher Rebbe uses the analogy of setting off an atomic bomb. The explosion can be set off at any moment, by any individual, even a small child. All he has to do is press the right button, and the world is changed irrevocably.
Says the Rebbe: “This individual does not need to be a great scientist who understands how the atom works or how this button is causing a reaction on the other side of the world. The thought process here is irrelevant; all that matters is the action—to press the correct button!
“If the above applies in a negative, destructive situation, how much more so does it apply to positive actions. Through one good deed to carry out the will of our Creator (fulfilling one of the seven Noahide laws for non-Jews, or one of the 613 commandments for Jews) we can cause a positive change in the entire world.
“Even if we don’t understand how our small action could have such a wide-ranging effect, this is not a matter that depends on intellect, but on action. When G-d causes you to encounter the correct button, then your one action can bring salvation and redemption to the entire world!”